Top 20 Most Underrated Tag Teams of All-Time

Whether your cup of tea consisted of the historic brawls between The Freebirds and The Von Erichs, or the death-defying Tables, Ladders and Chairs matches between Edge & Christian, The Hardy Boyz and The Dudley Boyz, there’s no denying wars pitting crews against one another are an integral part of pro-wrestling.

Tag team titles may not be as prestigious as world titles reserved for single competitors, but they’re just as essential. Over the course of numerous decades, hardcore fans sung the praises of The Road Warriors, The Hart Foundation, The Rock n’ Roll Express and Demolition, proving the stars making up these teams became larger than life superstars. Some duos, like The Hart Foundation and The Rockers, featured some of the biggest names in WWE history, with Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels going on to become storied WWE Hall of Fame members.

Unfortunately, WWE’s tag team division isn’t what it once was, but partnerships like The Usos, Tyson Kidd & Cesaro (members of The Brass Ring Club) and The Prime Time Players are doing a good job of rebuilding. Outside of WWE is where tag team wrestling has truly flourished, with teams like The Young Bucks, reDRagon, Candice & Joey and The Time Splitters, to name a few, mesmerize crowds with their excellent matches and unbelievable work rates.

Over the past few years, WWE gave us unorthodox partnerships including Team Hell No and Seth Rollins & Roman Reigns (of the defunct Shield stable), and a few that simply didn’t work, like Rybaxel and Hunico & Camacho.

Some teams, though, paved the way for future stars and it’s easy to overlook their contributions. Hotbeds for tag team wrestling from the 1980s to 2000s, both WWE and WCW excelled in bringing fans some of the best tag team matches in history, and even a couple of other promotions, like TNA and ECW, had compelling bouts featuring some of the best teams from their respective divisions.

While it’s easy to pinpoint those with the most title runs, this listing will feature champions, pioneers and forgotten pairings from the world of tag team wrestling, including those that don’t get enough credit.

Here are the 20 most underrated tag teams in wrestling history:

20 The Briscoe Brothers

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Winning over a dozen tag titles in their careers, both Jay and Mark Briscoe have been with Ring of Honor since day one, currently holding the record for most ROH Tag Team Championship wins (eight).

19 Booker T & Goldust

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18 Cho-Ten

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The team of Masahiro Chono and Hiroyoshi Tenzan may be unfamiliar to some wrestling fans, yet they’re one of the most revered tag teams in Japanese history.

17 Jeri-Show

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16 Mark Jindrak & Sean O’Haire

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15 Rob Van Dam & Sabu

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ECW had a bunch of impressive tag teams like The Eliminators, The Gangstas and The Impact Players, but none of them were as star-studded as the partnership of Rob Van Dam and Sabu. The team had spectacular matches against the likes of The Dudley Boyz, Hayabusa & Jinsei Shizaki and Lance Storm & Chris Candido.

14 America’s Most Wanted

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TNA is no slouch when it comes to tag team wrestling, with teams like Beer Money and The Motor City Machine Guns dazzling crowds in their heydays.

13 Brian Kendrick & Paul London

12 Kane & X-Pac

11 Sting & Lex Luger

Two of WCW’s biggest stars found success together in WCW’s tag team division from the early to mid-1990s, and you have to wonder if they were given the push together based on reputation alone.

10 Two Dudes With Attitude

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Much like the team of Sting and Luger, forming a tag team with the promotion’s top two superstars is a win-win situation.

9 Doom

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8 MNM

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7 The Smokin' Gunns

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It’s easy to laugh at the cowboy gimmick now, yet these two dudes weren’t exactly chopped liver in the ring.

6 The Quebecers

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The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers were another underrated tag team from the late-1980s, yet The Quebecers proved to be more successful.

In the early-1990s, where many of WWE’s top stars were exiled in a steroid scandal, The Quebecers were slowly making a name for themselves as one of the top teams in the world. Both Jacques Rougeau and Pierre Ouellet were gifted Canadian athletes, winning the WWE Tag Team Championship three times. Their manager at the time, Johnny Polo, would go on to be Raven, which was quite a shift in character.

5 The Hollywood Blondes

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Both Steve Austin and Brian Pillman were budding superstars when they formed the Hollywood Blondes in WCW. Misguided as singles wrestlers, these two weren’t the first ones associated with the name. Much like “The Nature Boy,” they borrowed the moniker from three teams that came before them, but they were certainly the best-known version.

They won two tag team championships together, and also earned Tag Team of The Year in 1993’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Both Austin and Pillman were incredibly arrogant on camera, but because they were exceptional wrestlers and some of the best competitors WCW had at the time, a cult following commenced until thousands of fans started to take notice.

4 World’s Greatest Tag Team

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Team Angle, seen as one of the best stables in the past 15 years, featured two rising stars in Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas.

Both possessing collegiate wrestling backgrounds, these two freak athletes were able to do it all in the ring, whether they were flying off the ropes or chain wrestling for 10 minutes. The Kurt Angle associates had an immediate impact in WWE, winning titles just two months after their debut.

3 Public Enemy

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When Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge came through the curtain waving their hands in the air, you knew it was going to be a violent night.

The team performed in WWE, NWA and WCW, but their notoriety was due to their work in ECW, where they competed in countless hardcore matches against the promotion’s best. Their accolades are impressive too (over a dozen tag title wins) and wrestling fans shouldn’t forget the impact these two men had on the business, considering some of their maneuvers were way ahead of the times.

2 Owen Hart & The British Bulldog

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Before the Hart Foundation returned as a stable in the latter half of the 1990s, brother-in-laws Hart and the Bulldog were one of the best pairings in WWE history.

Owen didn’t find much success alongside Koko B. Ware and Jim Neidhart before his successful run alongside Yokozuna, which made him a big player (that team was pretty underrated, too). The Bulldog, on the other hand, was one-half of the British Bulldogs, considered as one of the best tandems in wrestling history. Together, Owen and Davey Boy Smith made an impressive team that held the now-defunct World Tag Team Championship for 245 days. They competed against a who’s who of teams, including the Legion of Doom, the Smokin’ Gunns and Doug Furnas & Phil LaFon.

1 Harlem Heat

The truth of the matter is few mention Harlem Heat on the top of their greatest tag teams lists, which is downright laughable. Made up of brothers Booker T and Stevie Ray, they came a long way from their early days, billed as The Huffman Brothers and The Ebony Express.

Debuting for WCW in 1993, they were first subject to racist storylines that were scrapped, but when the foolishness was cast aside, they found themselves sharing rings with Sting, Vader, Sid Vicious, Dustin Rhodes and the Bulldog, before capturing their first tag team championship in just over a year’s time. Their five-month title reign meant WCW thought highly of both Booker and Stevie, who would win 10 championships together.

Sometimes accompanied by Col. Rob Parker and Sister Sherri, they feuded against some of the biggest teams in the business before the travesty that was Harlem Heat 2000. Booker T went on to a successful WWE career, and believe it or not, the team reunited earlier this year for the final time.

With Stevie Ray recently signing a Legends deal with WWE, we may see Harlem Heat suit up one last time, whether it's in the ring or for a WWE Hall of Fame ceremony.